Downtown booze licenses: City keeps the cap

Plymouth’s downtown liquor license cap, which limits the number of establishments in the central business district that can use a state license to sell alcohol by the glass, won’t be raised this year after all.

The City Commission, facing pressure from downtown business owners and landlords to maintain the current cap until a parking shortage is addressed, approved an amended alcohol management ordinance Monday — but kept the cap at 14 licenses rather than raising it by one, as had been planned.

The commission had voted 4-3 in March to allow up to 15 licenses to be used downtown, but business owners in recent weeks appeared at city meetings to lobby for maintaining the cap until there is more public parking.

Many of the same opponents of raising the cap spoke up Monday.

“It’s just a chaotic mess right now with parking,” said Patrick O’Neill, a downtown landlord and financial planner who said he cannot see clients in his own building during evening hours because of a parking shortage.

Opponents of raising the cap said they were not against downtown growth, but want officials to plan for where visitors will put their vehicles.

“If you don’t address the parking, this town is going to diminish,” said Jim Courtney, another downtown landlord. “I don’t care how you resolve it, but you’ve got to resolve it.”

New criteria, but

no new licenses

Monday’s decision — it was a voice vote, with no “no” votes — heads off what was expected to be fierce competition for the commission’s blessing to use the one license that would have been available under the raised downtown cap. The amended alcohol management ordinance revises the detailed criteria for how businesses seeking to use a license in the city will evaluated by officials as they decide applicants’ suitability.

The commission will take up a second and final reading of the amended ordinance at its Monday, June 6, meeting.

Some of the discussion over parking focused on the soon-to-open Westborn Market, which is going into the former post office building on Penniman. Westborn’s owners plan a 90-seat cafe for the store and sought to transfer a license, under a raised cap, in order to serve beer and wine there.

The Westborn site, however, will include 36 parking spaces — more than the city requires for its intended use as a retail shop and cafe.

Commissioner Oliver Wolcott, who is also chairman of the Downtown Development Authority board, said officials have heard the message on parking loud and clear and plan to increase their efforts toward increasing its availability. “It’s something that is going to be taken up in earnest,” Wolcott said.

‘Definitely need

to handle’ parking

Bryan Bandyk, a spokesman for Westborn, declined to comment Tuesday on the commission’s reversal on raising the license cap, saying he was hearing about the vote for the first time. Westborn tentatively plans to open on Penniman in late June, he said.

Stefan Stefanakis, who has also been wanting to obtain a license to sell beer and wine at the Greek Islands Coney Island, in which he is a partner, said the decision has pluses and minuses, but that he is mostly in favor of it.

“Before they give out any liquor license, including to myself, they need to definitely handle the parking situation,” said Stefanakis, whose father, George, also a partner in the restaurant, is part-owner of the building in which it’s located.

“If in a year from now we’re in the same place we are today ... that will be upsetting,” he continued. “That will be upsetting for a lot of people.”

The commission annually debates whether to raise its alcohol-by-the-glass license caps — 14 licenses downtown and 10 elsewhere in the city — while reviewing licenses-holders’ compliance with the city’s alcohol ordinance and recommending their licenses for renewal — or non-renewal — by the Michigan Liquor Control Commission.